Summary

The Mayor greets Brand politely. He expresses sympathy for Mother's illness, mentions that Brand stands to inherit her considerable estate and suggests that once she dies, Brand should move away, explaining that Brand's vision and practice is better suited to a larger center. He reminisces at length about the village's past glories, including stories of two mighty warriors, and then suggests that Brand's plan to combine the ideal and the practical sides of life is inappropriate, caught up as everyone is in the struggle to simply making a living. Brand insists that the people of the village are lazy. The Mayor insists that all the people, including himself, are working very hard, and that if Brand is staying, his preaching must be restricted to Sundays. The Mayor says that the working people must be allowed to work. Brand insists that he, like all men, must be allowed...